Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Police Were Told To Keep Roy Moore Away From High School Cheerleaders, Two More Women Accuse Sen. Al Franken Of Inappropriate Touching

Police Were Told To Keep Roy Moore Away From High School Cheerleaders, Retired Officer Says
“I didn’t realize it until some time later that when they said he liked young girls — I just thought he liked young ladies, you know, younger than him, maybe in their 20s.”
By Marina Fang 11/22/2017

A retired Alabama police officer said she and her colleagues were told decades ago to “make sure” Roy Moore “didn’t hang around” high school cheerleaders, and confirmed previous reports that the Republican Senate candidate was banned at the time from a local mall for predatory behavior toward teenage girls.

“The rumor mill was that he liked young girls, and ... we were advised that he was being suspended from the mall because he would hang around the young girls that worked in the stores and ... really got into a place of where they say he was harassing,” former Gadsden police officer Faye Gary told MSNBC on Tuesday.

“We were also told to watch him at the ball games, and make sure that ... he didn’t hang around the cheerleaders,” she said.

Gary did not clarify who issued the warnings, saying they “were just rumors” that circulated both at the local police department and courthouse. She also said that while working on juvenile cases as an officer, she never received a formal complaint about Moore....

Two More Women Accuse Sen. Al Franken Of Inappropriate Touching
One woman told HuffPost that Franken had grabbed her backside at an event honoring women.
By Jenavieve Hatch and Zachary Roth 11/22/2017

That makes it four women who have accused Sen. Al Franken of groping them.

Two more women have told HuffPost that Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) touched their butts in separate incidents. These are the third and fourth such allegations against Franken in the past week. Leeann Tweeden, a radio host, wrote last week that Franken had kissed and groped her without her consent during a 2006 USO tour. On Monday, Lindsay Menz accused Franken of groping her at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010.

The two additional women, who said they were not familiar with each others’ stories, both spoke on condition of anonymity. But their stories, which describe events during Franken’s first campaign for the Senate, are remarkably similar — and both women have been telling them privately for years.

In a statement to HuffPost, Franken said, “It’s difficult to respond to anonymous accusers, and I don’t remember those campaign events.”

The first woman, who spoke to HuffPost on condition of anonymity because she’s worried she’ll be harassed online for making the allegation, said Franken groped her when they posed for a photo after a June 25, 2007, event hosted by the Minnesota Women’s Political Caucus in Minneapolis.

“My story is eerily similar to Lindsay Menz’s story,” the first woman said. “He grabbed my buttocks during a photo op.”